I played Factory Balls Forever by Bart Bonte, published on his own website and available on many other sites. Factory Balls Forever is available on browser, on Bart Bonte’s personal website as well as many other different sites that compile similar minigames. A different version of Factory Balls is also available on Steam, with many more available puzzles.
The game includes simple procedures such as clicking each “element” to add it to the ball for that level, whether it’s a feature that obscures part of the ball or adding an element that will permanently alter the ball’s appearance, factoring in whatever obscuring features the ball has on at the time. Thus, the objective of the game is also simple — there is an image of the goal ball in the center of the screen, and the objective of each individual level is to get the ball to look like the one pictured on the box, as if you’re completing that delivery in the ball factory
Here, the glasses are what I referred to as an “obscuring element,” and the yellow and black paint buckets are “appearance altering” elements. The picture pasted on the box is the objective for this level.
It’s a minor feature, but it’s cute to see the objective of each level worked into the overall aesthetic of the game — since the player is supposed to be in this factory customizing balls to various specifications, having the final objective as an image pasted on the box that the ball is “delivered” in serves as a crucial element that still fits the theme of the game as a whole.
The types of fun this game aims to fulfill are challenge and submission, and I’d say that the game adequately accomplishes these goals. With its target audience of anyone ranging from children to adults, it does a good job of interspercing easier levels to introduce mechanics with more challenging levels that take what the player has learned in previous levels and compounding and layering these mechanics. The game also accomplishes the submission type of fun because each level is quite short, and it’s easy to pick up and play starting from whatever level the player was last on. There also aren’t any serious consequences for getting the ball’s configuration wrong; either the player can paint over the ball to wipe away whatever pattern was there previously, or if a level requires a ball to be reset completely, Bonte provides the player with a recycle bin that resets the ball to its original state. Bonte does a fantastic job of introducing new mechanics to the player, by combining them with simpler old mechanics to help the player get used to the new mechanic before creating a more complex level that leverages a new mechanic.
In this level, the seeds are a new mechanic, and the player likely needs to figure out that the different colors of grass are a result of watering the grass seeds different amounts. However, the “two hemispheres” appearance of the ball is straight from the first level, so it’s nice to see a familiar mechanic mixed with this new twist. Even though I immediately recognized that familiar feature, it took me more trial and error than expected to realize the different levels of grass growing and even the size of the flowers, and how to layer the seeds appropriately to get the intended final product. For a level that I’d initially interpreted as “simple,” I was extremely gratified completing this level and learning about two new elements for the ball.
